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Giveaways For SEO: The (Almost!) Definitive Guide

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YouMoz section.The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Hosting giveaways for the purpose of SEO is nothing new. But in the right hands, it can be a profitable and powerful SEO (and social media) tactic to add to your arsenal.

The premise is simple: you give away something of value to your audience, and in return, they socialize your brand through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. It’s a win­­–win situation, and if done correctly, it will attract social buzz and juicy links. Here’s the best strategy/process I’ve found for hosting giveaways for SEO, including some must-have resources to help you succeed.

Step One: Decide On the Prize

Decide what prize you want to give away. It might sound like an obvious step, but the decision shouldn’t be taken lightly. Ask yourself:

Will it attract potential customers that could convert down the line, or just the mass market of freebie seekers?

On the flipside, will its appeal be broad enough to actually generate interest? You want to find a middle ground here.

Will it still be of interest in a month’s time? Trending products can attract huge numbers, but gauge their longevity carefully.

I generally recommend looking for something on Amazon.com or a similar reputable online retailer for a couple reasons: highly competitive pricing, efficient delivery administration, and the option to add a gift note for a more personal touch.

In terms of prize value, I’ve found the $150 - $300 mark to be quite effective; it’s enough to garner interest from the masses whilst still keeping your piggy bank in one piece.

Step Two: Decide What You Want in Return

We all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and well-planned giveaways are no exception. You need to make your users do something in return for an entry. This can range from some simple clicks to fully-fledged engagement. You might ask them to:

Follow you on Twitter (or tweet about your giveaway)

Sign up to your mailing list

Refer five friends to your brand page/campaign

For a more thorough interaction, you might ask that they:

Post some sort of response on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+

Post a video response to your Youtube video

Sing a cover (think of either a longtime classic or a hugely popular trend)

Record a dance (think Gangham, Ellen, Jai Ho, random flashmobs)

The options are practically endless so long as you can capture, track, and measure them, which leads us onto Step Three.

Step Three: Build the “Giveaway Machine”

While you certainly can host your giveaway “manually” using various scripts, there are some great pre-packaged tools out there to help you automate the process. Be sure to check out these platforms before you try re-invent the wheel:

Rafflecopter is possibly the most popular giveaway tool, providing a clean interface with a number of social action buttons built in (including Facebook page integration). It’s also relatively obedient to the terms and conditions of the various social media platforms, so you’re less likely to run into trouble (more about this later). Rafflecopter’s free interface is more than sufficient for first time giveaways. For those who need it, the service comes with a $99 white label option.

Punchtaboffers a fairly similar service with some alternative styling and configuration options. Well worth a look if Rafflecopter doesn’t tickle you.

Secondstreetis an enterprise-level solution, offering mobile support, full white label functionality, and a host of other features. Be prepared to spend some money, though.

If you’re uncertain about which platform to use, start with Rafflecopter and assess any additional needs from there.

Whichever platform you decide to use, be sure to build a dedicated entry page on your website with optimized copy to ensure optimal rankings for “win a <insert prize here>." You’ll be surprised how many people are actively searching for ways to win the things they want! Also be sure to incorporate social sharing buttons on this page to increase chances of viral sharing.

A note on timing

I generally suggest running giveaways for 30 days to get optimal value. If you go any shorter, you’re minimizing the window of opportunity to gain entries (thereby minimizing your ROI); if you go too much longer, you’re potentially deterring users from entering since the winning opportunity seems too far away.

Step Four: Spread the Word

Understand one thing – without effective promotion, your giveaway will be a flop. Promotion needn’t cost an arm and a leg, but be prepared to put some marketing dollar into getting the word out about your giveaway. As a rule of thumb, I’ve always tried to spend at least twice as much on promotion compared to prize. Working on a $300 prize value, that pegs promo spend at an additional $600, creating a total cost of $900. This rule isn’t hard and fast, but I urge you to keep at least some budget for promotion.

Promotion of your giveaway can take many forms – I’ll outline some of the most effective ones I’ve found:

1. The freebies & “easy wins”

Inform your existing client base/Mailing List

Send a mailer to your existing clients informing them of your giveaway. This is straightforward and shouldn’t cost you much, if anything at all. Promoting to an existing client base also adds future value, because you can access them via multiple marketing channels down the line (assuming you’re asking them to follow you on social media platforms).

Share it on social media

While this will likely have a lower return since you’re asking social media followers to follow you on social media), it’s still a quick, easy win that will maximize the number of social platforms on which you can connect with followers. If you’re using Rafflecopter, be sure to add a tab to your Facebook page to make it as easy as possible for your users. You can also use Pagemodo to create a customized tab.

Get entrants to blog about it

Consider offering extra entries to visitors who blog about your giveaway on their own sites. Just make sure they fill in their URL else this could be abused.

2. The low-cost tactics

Submit to giveaway sites

Believe it or not, there are tons of websites dedicated to listing new giveaways. While these kinds of sites do tend to drive lower quality, giveaway-hunter type visitors, they still provide some engaging traffic for a relatively low cost. There is a huge giveaway community in the US, but you’ll find similar sites in most other countries/regions. Just Google “submit giveaway” as a starting search string in whichever country you’re targeting and you’re bound to find some targets. You’ll receive some nice clean, do-follow links, and while they will fade rather fast, it’s a low/no-cost way of getting some traffic and traction.

Archaic as they may be, linky lists can drive some serious traffic (plus some short-term link juice). Don’t know what linky lists are? Check out Deidre at Cuckoo For Coupon Deals’ list of giveaway linky sites. She also offers a submission service to all of these sites for $80. In my experience this has been very worthwhile.

Grab some paid stumbles

StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery platform provides dirt-cheap targeted traffic. Depending on what you’re giving away, you can get some serious traction using this tool. I recommend doing a trial run of $20 and measuring your return before jumping in.

Push a press release

Some argue that press releases have limited value these days, but I see no harm in doing some free submissions to promote your giveaway. Additionally, you can use a tool like link prospector to find relevant blogs that you can syndicate your press release to. Most “mommy blogs” will be happy to mention a high value giveaway to their audiences; you just need to let them know.

3. The pricey tactics

Adwords & Adcentre advertising

Bidding on low-competition keywords such as “win a <insert prize name>” can drive reasonable amounts of low-cost traffic to your site. The display network is particularly powerful for giveaways since it’s visually stimulating and enticing. That said, Pay Per Click bills can rack up mighty fast unchecked, so keep a keen eye on your spend and conversion rate.

Facebook advertising

As with Adwords and Adcentre, Facebook Ads can drive some great traffic to your giveaway. I recommend creating a customized tab (using something like Pagemodo) to minimise bounce rate and increase conversion to entry.

Business 2 Blogger paid outreach

If you haven’t used it before, check out Business 2 Blogger, a platform that connects advertisers with private bloggers. Use it for some targeted promotion of your giveaway on relevant blogs. You can get featured on a relevant blog for as little as $15-$20, but be beware, these costs can rack up quickly!

There is unfortunately no cookie-cutter approach to giveaway promotion, and what works for one may not work for another. You need to play around with various combinations of the above steps and monitor your analytics data to assess what drives maximum ROI for your giveaways.

It’s crucial that you drive your giveaway promotion strategy from launch day to ensure maximum exposure. (It’s amazing how quickly a month passes.) On the same note, try to stagger your tactics to ensure a consistent flow of entries and maximum longevity.

Step Five: Picking a Winner

The final (logical) step is wrapping up the giveaway and picking a winner. Always, and I mean always, pick your winner on the day you promised to. Delayed selection is the ultimate public relations fail and will hurt your future giveaway success. The last thing you want is a social media blowout about how your giveaway was a scam. Also, make sure that your prize gets delivered promptly after announcing the winner.

Milk the opportunity

Follow up with the winner within a week to make sure they received the prize. You’ll generally get a very appreciative thanks. For extra traction, politely ask them if they’d mind sharing their appreciation on Facebook or Twitter. That personal endorsement will generate fantastic trust for your brand’s giveaways down the line.

Wrapping Up

Running giveaways for SEO can be a high-return activity if done correctly, benefiting not only your SEO efforts, but social media and brand awareness as a whole. Remember to allocate sufficient budget to promote your giveaway and work on perfecting that balance between mass market and qualified prospects. Good luck!

69 Comments

I
agree that the price range of $150-$300 is the most effective. Cash,
gift cards and electronics (tablets, phones) are by far, the most popular prizes. Also, like
Greg from Rafflecopter said, make sure to familiarize yourself with
Facebook and G+ guidelines. Most importantly, read and
comply with your local sweepstakes laws.

Promotion is a VERY important, often overlooked part of a giveaway.

You're
smart in recommending to set aside 2x as much as your prize amount to
spend on promotion. As someone who professionally promotes giveaways, I
see what a positive impact the right promotion can have on entries and
exposure.

As
some of the other commenters have mentioned, you will encounter some
professional sweepers using the giveaway sites, but a large amount of
sweepers actually avoid the smaller blog/company run giveaways and stick
to the larger, professionally run sweeps. You'll run into the most sweepers
on the big sweeps websites (Online Sweepstakes, Sweepstakes Advantage,
etc.).

The
majority of my audience on Giveaway Promote are actually casual
giveaway entrants and/or bloggers who will use real Facebook accounts,
real email accounts and will stick around if you engage with them. Of
course, they want to win stuff -- but it's also the way that they hear
about new brands, products, companies and blogs.

I think giveaways were a very powerful way to get links a few years ago, but do you think Google has started to view these as a type of paid link? (ie just filter any links in posts that have "giveaway" in the title, or "prize winner" in the post)I know asking a blogger to host a giveaway 3-4 years would have flattered him/her, but nowadays I know a lot of bloggers (especially the medium to high profile ones) get pitched for giveaways a LOT, so much that they reject a lot of them. You now have to target the new blogger who only has blogged for a couple of months, and the link juice to compensation ratio for those are not as great.

All depending on what they YOU want in return, if its social media buzz I have to say this..

I think asking them to take an action that will boost your reputation is at the very least grey hat, if not black hat. I say this because you are asking them to generate social media buzz for a prize that is for creating social media buzz. It is one step away from paying somebody to post a link to your site on another site. Which we all know is spamming.

If you ask for something like send us a comment, review a product, participate in a poll, or anything other then asking them to create buzz about you, then I think it is safe. In turn however, you will be creating social media buzz because you're giving something away. The difference here is you didn't create the task of creating social media buzz, rather it was the side effect.. which if you ask me is the whole purpose of social media.

Hi Donford & HenleyFirst off, thanks for reading and engaging! It's always great to get feedback, positive or negative :) You both have valid points, and it all comes down to how you use this promotional tactic. As with anything, there are always "good" and "evil" ways to use it. All up to the host I guess.Thanks again!

Giveaways can work really well indeed. But Google doesnt like this tactic it seems. They are pretty clear in the updated guidelines:"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link"I would be careful using giveaway tactics for links without considering the risks. But lets not forget about marketing and social media :)

I completely agree - Google has rules against this. For all giveaway posts that we do when we work with different brands (for example - http://blog.rafflecopter.com/2012/08/fitdesk-work-exercise-bike/), we typically do a blanket nofollow to see that they don't receive the inbound link credit. I think the next question that could be argued would be now that your links are nofollow, would you have to noindex the post? I'm leaning towards 'no', but I could see an argument from both sides.

Hey Derek - thanks for the Rafflecopter shout-out :) You hit the nail on the head with many of your points, particularly the promotion aspect. We've seen a handful of folks jump into a giveaway promotion expecting that a prize they're giving away is enough to get folks excited and entering. While a good prize helps and a great prize is even better, you've still got to put work into promoting it too!

While many folks choose to run giveaways on Twitter and Facebook only, we're huge believers that running it on a blog or website has many advantages. A giveaway promotion on your blog vs a Facebook page tab means that you own the content forever, whereas a page tab only lasts as long as the promotion (or until you remove the tab). With a giveaway on your blog, you have more control over the landing page, you can excite your readers/entrants with great content surrounding the promotion, and you might see more folks linking to back to you. The post will live forever, so expect to see some organic traffic to the page well after the giveaway has ended.

I should note is that if your giveaway is running on your blog, you're still subject to Facebook promotion guidelines, Google+ terms and conditions, etc. While it's ever-so-tempting to directly incentivize folks to share the giveaway on Facebook or add you to their G+ circles as means of entry, there are some rules that FB and G+ have in place.

Facebook isn't as strict as many folks think; we've seen over 250k giveaways run through our software and have never had an issues with someone getting banned by Facebook. However, there are some 'dos and don'ts' that everyone should be aware of. We dissected the Facebook promotion guidelines a few months ago and how they pertain to giveaways on your blog:

Finally, Google+ has come out and said they don't like giveaways, contests, and promotions :( While it makes us sad, we believe that incentivizing folks to interact with you on Google+ with a prize is a no-no:

Even though you’re allowed to tell/direct your readers to click the +1 button, Google doesn’t want +1 buttons clicked if it’s tied to some incentive, whether that be a prize you might win/receive or a payment. I'm always recommending folks to avoid G+ in their giveaways.

Thanks Derek! Email me at greg@rafflecopter.com if you have any other questions or feedback :)

As you mentioned, to further enhance the effectiveness of your giveaways,
it's smart to target your desired audience by properly picking giveaways that specifically
draw in the type of traffic that fits your blog or site theme. For instance, if
you run a digital art site, do a giveaway that digital artists would be much
more drawn to, like a copy of Photoshop or a Wacom Tablet.

That way when the giveaway is shared on FB and Twitter, it
will more likely catch the eye of your desired target audience and you can grow
your community with engaged users and fans. (where as gift cards, cash and
iPads giveaways will draw in more of an untargeted audience)

Also, it's effective to tie the giveaway together with a fun
themed page revolving around the giveaway. If you run a movie blog, do a giveaway
about a new Blu-ray movie release and do a fun and engaging review of the movie
either through words/images or perhaps a video.

Also ask for comments on that page from your community for a relevant
discussion centering around the movie. That way you've created a great resource
page for the movie, engaged your community and tied in a fun giveaway that will
be shared and linked into which will garner you more fans or traffic.

In the end, it's about connecting with your community with
hip, relevant giveaways that they are excited to share with their friends on
FB, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. You can then properly grow your community with
engaged visitors - plus your current community can win some cool prizes! :)

Great points about using a giveaway to engage your audience and build your brand. We've been looking at a giveaway for a while now, but is proven to be surprisingly difficult to find a prize that lends itself to interesting content and resonates strongly with our readers.

I think you have to be careful not to abuse the giveaway. It needs to provide real value to your audience and more than just a few links for your site. What can you come up with that is going to attract real attention and the right people?

Great post, Derek. It is a low cost way of getting traffic. It is really helpful for building our brand and increase values of our SEO. Giveaway is one of the most effective link building methods, but it is also an alternative to paying
cash, and Google doesn't like this type of link building. So what is your perspective about this statement?

Hey SanketThanks for joining the conversation!Well, as I mentioned above, its all down to how you use your giveaway. There are ethical and unethical ways to use any tool. And that's a whole other debate as what defines those two :)Thanks again!

Derek,I think the general concensus here, is before you give something away you have to ask "why are you doing it?". To have a give away or contest, just to have it is pointless, but to use it to get more email addreses and/or fans is something else entirely. My thoughts are that a contest should be part of an overall branding plan. I've seen plenty of inflated Facebook pages that have tons of fans but no interactions. If you are running a contest you should ask yourself why are you doing it and how do you plan on keeping these people's attention.

Couldn't agree more! Thanks for the feedback :)Absolutely, giveaways are merely one part of the overall SEO/Content Marketing/Online Marketing "machine" and cannot be expected to work in isolation or without direction and a defined goal in mind.

I love the whole concept of giveaways for SEO purposes because there are so many ways to get creative with it.

As luck would have it, the company where I am an in-house SEO is co-hosting a 90-minute webinar today with a company called PreSonus based out of Baton Rouge, LA. There are actually two giveaways involved. First, is the content of the webinar itself. It's a 90-minute tutorial on how to use a digital mixer, specifically in a church with a Worship Band. For our target market, this is already pretty juicy. Second, one webinar attendee will actually win the product being demonstrated. The last time we did an event like this the buzz and sales bump lasted over a year and resulted in us getting over 100,000 views on one of our YouTube videos (too bad we aren't hosting our videos with Wistia!).

Down the street from us, Domino's Pizza is having a giveaway. Completely unrelated, except for the coincidence that it's all happening on the same day. They are giving away free slices of pan pizza from 12-2. Being the conscientious SEO that I am I will of course be going to the even and sharing it on Foursquare and Facebook and Twitter. Now, they won't get a link back from my blog because by the time I put it up the event will be over. But they will get me to create buzz for them....pretty smart!

Having been exposed to so many giveaways/sweepstakes in the last 18 months, I'm honestly surprised how often we see giveaways being run in the wild. Last weekend as a fun activity, we purposely set out to find companies in our hometown with a brick and mortar locations that are running some kind of giveaway promotion. We now have a folder of 15+ giveaway/sweepstakes entry forms after searching downtown for just a few hours. About a quarter of the stores we walked into were involved with some type of promotion. Giveaways are all around us :)

Quite a comprehensive post for those seeking to launch their own giveaways. Thanks for summing it up beautifully. I like the last line where in you highlighted the importance of achieving balance between mass market and qualified prospects because while giveaways may be effective, they are a lot of online readers out there that are professionally into joining giveaways - which may not be your target market.

I love this post! I run giveaways on our blog and it is an excellent way to increase exposure and social media for companies. We keep our fan base engaged with the companies and encourage interaction and clicks to the company websites. I think since we include product reviews with a lot of our giveaways it helps our fans to learn more about the products than just being able to win a prize. Most of our fans end up actually using the products or services. We continue to talk about the products and how we use them in our every day lives.We do charge for our services. We not only host the giveaway but we also promote the product, service, and promotion several times a day to our large social media network. Before we promote any product or service we have show our potential clients our demographics to see if they are a good fit for our audience. We've been doing this for about a year and a half and really loving being able to offer some great products and services to our fans. You can see more about us at http://www.giveawaybandit.com. Great post!

Well I have an update. There is something to be gained from giveaways that help with SEO. SERP to be exact. I have been using giveaway to push social signals on sponsors sites and many are reporting increase in search traffic. Rather than the usual "Follow me on Facebook" entries I'm asking entrants to like and share the sponsors site content (products) ReTweet the sponsors promotional tweets and a few other ways to drive social signals to a sponsors site. The increase in social signals are driving relevant traffic from search because the sponsor gains SERP rank and is found in search more often.

Great post... I would add one to the list of software programs. It's not strictly for giveaways, but we've used Offerpop on one of our brands, and it has worked wonderfully. We did a few giveaway to grow social media, and now we're trying out a caption contest to engage our newly grown social community. It's a great product!

Giveaways are a great tool to boost social media presence and get more people to visit your site. The quality of the audience though is not that great, most lost interest the moment you stop giving away things.

Be cautious with the dedicated competition / giveaway websites. They attract professional 'compers' that have no interested in your product / service / business - their sole reason for existing is to win more free stuff.

I'm not arguing against your post - there are folks who definitely enter giveaways for a living. And obviously if I'm a company like Kitchenmaid, I would want to have my products on a cooking blog vs a 'giveaway' blog. But I do believe that there's value in those who are labeled as 'compers'. It's a case study I would love to put together someday... I think people would be surprised at the results.

Great post, Derek!I'm actually in the middle of putting together a linking strategy for a larger eCommerce site and the idea of a giveaway is definitely on the list.Your post will definitely come in handy when fleshing it all out.

I have been thinking about this for the past week, glad someone make a post about it. For a new website that has very little brand awareness and a small following on social networking sites a competition is a great idea. I keep seeing competitions on Facebook and they all end up with over 50,000 likes and comments, it seems like an effective low cost solution.

Hi DanielIt's a great social media booster for new sites that have little social traction. Whilst it's not the most targeted traffic (well, depending on where/how you market your giveaway), its a great buzz generator.Thanks for reading!

Derek - Thanks for your article, I'm new to this and I've never used a give away to bring in traffic and create a buzz. In your experience how "real" are the follows and likes? What I mean is will they stick around and engage in the site or leave after the prize is given away? Thanks

Hey Daniel - you're definitely right. Giveaways are a great way to start getting some awareness. That said, when you refer to competitions on Facebook that are run directly on the Facebook wall (share this photo, like this post, etc), those are actually against Facebook promotion guidelines. We monitor Facebook sweepstakes and contests every day see them all the time.

I wrote a post over the summer that completely dissects Facebook promotion guidelines. Due to the nature of our company, I'm obsessed with the subject :P

Take it from me Google and Bing are all over giveaway blogs. I know I have one. Having a giveaway on your blog is not a bad thing because you can excite your readers into clicking on your blog a few extra times and you can get your readers to promote you to their friends and family via Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and some others sites. Sharing giveaways with other bloggers has it's problems but I found that the best way to share giveaways is to ask that those that post your giveaways on their blogs to "noindex" the posts because you dont want them to suffer duplicate content penalties. I have also learned the hard way that asking somebody to do something does not mean they know how to do something...lol I have had to "noindex" almost all my blog post because the bloggers I shared my giveaways with did not do what I asked them to do. Now I make sure that my giveaway review post looks nothing like the giveaway post I share so, if the bloggers I share this with don't "noindex" their posts they alone suffer the duplicate content problem.

Giveaways have their place but not so much for SEO. I personally see a giveaway as an ad. I contact companies that have a need for additional exposure and ask to review their product or service. If they agree I set up a giveaway for them. No I dont follow sponsors link and I do share the sponsors links in the giveaway posts I send out with rel="nofollow" in the link. Promoting a product is one thing but boosting link juice by sending a sponsors link to 50 bloggers is not a good thing. Again I think giveaways are a great way to get your site or product promoted but don't think for a second that you are going to gain an SEO advantage from this. Agree disagree or ask questions by replying and if I can help you or learn from you I will be happy to do so.

If giveaways are for promotional purposes, I think it's a poor strategy. I know of many brands who have had poor success converting those giveaways into real customers. Most people just want the free prize, and could care less about buying it.

Agreed, the times that we did a give away contest we attracted the wrong people that were merely in it for the free stuff (judging by their fake e-mail and conversion) and had no intention of ever buying anything. It would be great to see some tips on this from experienced giveaway contest hosters. Of course, besides lowering the lead price for promoters.

Hey HenleyThanks for popping back back! The quality of entrants all depends on where and how you market your giveaway. It's always a fine balance between quality and quantity, but you certainly can gain highly targeted visitors if you're marketing in the right places.Cheers!

I found myself nodding in agreement in a lot of what you said. I do think they play a part, but in a much secondary/minor role than a lot of folks think. We interviewed 30 companies in the last six months who work with bloggers on a monthly basis and asked them what they were looking to achieve in these campaigns they were running. We had a lot of folks respond "SALES, TRAFFIC, SEO".

If you're working with a blogger in that respect, I'm not so sure you're in it for the right reasons. I've seen companies refuse to work with bloggers because they put nofollow tags on their posts.

Great guide.Although I would agree that PPC is a pricier tactic for marketing giveaways, I've always found it a worth investment in promoting any type of non commercial content, whether a giveaway a piece of link bait or survey etc.

We use giveaways quite a bit, so it's nice to see a good post on this. I'll add a couple of things that have worked well for us:Bonus entries when friends enter : Particularly if running the give-away through facebook or twitter, this can work really well. In short each person is added to the prize draw with one chance to win. However for every friend that enters they are given another chance. This can really encourage people to amplify your give-away for you. Most of the apps to run give-aways will offer this as an option as well.Follow up with something hard hitting: If you are using facebook heavily in your promotion then the give-away should generate lots of comments/likes/shares. That sends your edgerank soaring - meaning that the next things you post will get seen by more people for free. Whether you decide to "double up" and try something else to lift your edgerank higher, or cash in with something more commercial it is worth a bit of time to consider your next post.

Giveaways and contests are incredibly popular and can really increase your social media presence (fortunately it can boost SEO too). This is a really simple and effective way to kick start a small businesses SEO and social media journey for a relatively low cost. Really useful post!

- You can also grant access to the giveaway with a facebook "Like", that's quite useful for B2C

- Not generally known, giveaways can be quite helpful for B2B. At Hisocial we've seen very successful promos targeted to business. For example, you can give a white paper or a free ebook as a giveaway.

- If in the future you update this post , please take also into account our platform HiSocial (www.hisocial.com)

Great summary Derek! We've been doing this for years. Our most successful was a joint blog/pinterest based comp - check out the huge number of shares here: http://www.ledelicieux.com/2012/05/17/win-a-kitchenaid-artisan-stand-mixer-valued-at-749/. We used rafflecopter and got over 11 thousand entries. It's a great tool and one I would highly recommend as you have.

I find it is usually more useful to host the giveaway on a third party site that is not your own for 2 reasons: 1) new audience who have never heard of you and 2) the onus of promotion falls on the person doing the giveaway so it makes promotion cheaper and more efficient.

I think advantage can be taken still when your giveaway event has ended and you handed over the giveaway to the winner. You can write a press release/guest post for it or run a social media campaign regarding your successful giveaway event. On social media campaign, it can be mentioned that we will conduct this even again after two or six months after seeing the ROI.

I agree with much of the above. Giveaways do provide another avenue for increasing shares and traffic. In fact, pro-bloggers are often given free stuff to give away online in exchange for product reviews (which often result in links).

Personally, I think it can be a good way to increase traffic and possibly users; but if all your shares go to your giveaway posts, you might not be providing the right value to your users in the content your site is supposed to be out.

I too run a sweepstakes site and it is an absolutely fun venture bringing traffic both in and out. Would love to be featured on Seomoz in the future if you ever do another sweeps and giveaways post.You can find us at http://LinkiesContestLinkies.com, we've been in the game almost 2 years now. What a blast.Kevin Linkie